Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan mayoral candidate Simon Chang (張善政) yesterday denied plagiarizing Council of Agriculture (COA) reports during his time at Acer Inc, weeks after his opponent withdrew from the race over separate plagiarism allegations.
COA Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said that the council would look into allegations involving research sponsored by the agency.
While working as vice president at Acer, Chang applied to serve as principal investigator in a COA research project from 2007 to 2009, Chinese-language Mirror Media reported.
Photo: Chen En-huei, Taipei Times
The council approved his request and provided funding of NT$57.36 million (US$1.88 million at the current exchange rate), it said.
The reports prepared by Chang’s team fail to cite the sources of some translated texts, and contain content copied directly from media reports, journals and the council’s own publications, although the final report was never made public, Mirror Media said.
When Chang’s former opponent in the Taoyuan mayoral race, former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), faced allegations that he plagiarized his two master’s theses, Chang said that “one should drop out of the election when one loses one’s integrity,” it said.
Although the council is not academia, research commissioned by the government should adhere to certain regulations and be checked by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics before the project is closed, Chen said.
The council would explain the case to the public once everything has been clarified, he added.
In response, Chang said he was commissioned by the council’s information management center to provide information on the development of e-agriculture in other countries to research institutions in Taiwan.
Researchers collected information from journals and media reports to introduce new technologies to Taiwan, which is different from writing a thesis, he added.
His team members worked hard to gather the information, he said, adding that while there might not be a list of sources at the end of the report, “for example, one of our presentations listed the main Japanese sources.”
The project also involved holding seminars at agricultural research institutions across Taiwan to promote e-agriculture information, he said.
He is “very proud” of the project’s results, Chang said, adding that it is regrettable that this contribution to the nation’s e-agriculture development is being used to defame him.
Chang said he is also sorry for affecting Acer and Google, where he worked as chief operating officer for Asia-Pacific infrastructure.
“Our opponents should pursue a more positive way to compete instead of attempting to discredit a job that has been beneficial to the nation’s development by comparing it to a thesis plagiarism issue,” he said.
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) of the KMT told a news conference that if the whistle-blower’s accusations are well-founded, they should report the case, otherwise the incident would “merely be a political act.”
It is impossible to spend NT$57.36 million on a research project only to have a professor gather information, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) said.
Chang “should be well aware of what plagiarism is, as he was an academic and a professor at National Taiwan University,” he said.
He added that Chang “is not qualified as a candidate” and asked him to “think twice before officially entering the election,” or the case might affect elections across the country.
Acer in a statement said that the project summarized agricultural development in Taiwan, applications of technology in various agencies and outcomes of e-agriculture implemented abroad.
Researchers also conducted experiments to test new technologies, such as radio frequency identification and wireless sensor networks, it added.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuang,
Hsieh Chun-lin and CNA
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)